Contact:
Melanie Bui Larsen
Director of Communications and Outreach
press@rcrc.org
202.403.2220
RCRC ANNOUNCES UPDATE IN LEADERSHIP
Rev. Katey Zeh Appointed as Permanent CEO
The Board of Directors of the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice (RCRC) has unanimously decided to name Rev. Katey Zeh as RCRC’s permanent Chief Executive Officer. Since March 2019, Rev. Zeh has served as RCRC’s Interim CEO with distinction. During this period, she shepherded the organization through profound structural changes while advancing RCRC’s programs and deepening the organization’s partnerships throughout the movement.
Rev. Zeh has been faithfully involved with RCRC for over a decade, beginning as a youth activist and, more recently, completing her tenure as RCRC Board Chair in 2018. An ordained Baptist minister, author, speaker, and social justice advocate, Rev. Zeh has demonstrated extraordinary scholarship and leadership in the broader reproductive health, choice, rights, and justice movement.
Rev. Zeh has written on issues of reproductive freedom for many outlets, including the Huffington Post, Sojourners, Fidelia’s Sisters, Religion News Services, and Religion Dispatches, and her advocacy work has been featured in numerous outlets including The Washington Post, The Nation, Colorlines, VICE News, Baptist News Global, and Feministing. Most recently, Truthout published Rev. Zeh’s op-ed examining the contradiction between religious conservatives’ “pro-life” stance and their manifestly anti-life attitudes to COVID-19.
Rev. Zeh has authored Women Rise Up: Sacred Stories of Resistance for Today’s Revolution, which offers an alternative for people of faith dissatisfied with our culture’s misuse of faith to shame and divide people. She is currently at work on her next book, which will be focused on stories of abortion, grief, and healing.
“The Board of Directors deeply appreciates Katey’s leadership and management style that has resulted in a very productive and interconnected staff team. The relationship between Katey and the Board has become even stronger during this interim time as we have faithfully discerned the future of RCRC during the last several months. The Board was delighted when she accepted our offer to serve as our Chief Executive Officer!” — Rev. Linda Jaramillo, Board Chair
Rev. Zeh has been steadfast in her commitment to reproductive freedom, as well as her efforts to spotlight the weaponization of “religious freedom” to further a political agenda that upholds white supremacist, Christian nationalist, classist, and patriarchal systems of oppression. For decades, limiting access to reproductive healthcare has been wielded as one of many strategies to inflict control on Black, Brown, Indigenous, and people of color.
RCRC recognizes that this announcement comes at a particularly fraught cultural moment—both for the reproductive freedom movement and the larger community. Our nation is in crisis on many fronts: public health, systemic oppression, racism, the economy, and more. However, this is also a time for the possibility of great change and revolution.
RCRC remains committed to bringing the moral force of religion to advocate for reproductive choice, health, rights, and justice, and is grateful for Rev. Katey Zeh’s extraordinary leadership in this critical moment.
####
The Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice is a national community of religious organizations and faithful individuals dedicated to achieving reproductive health, rights, and justice. Through education, organizing, and advocacy, we seek to elevate religious voices wherever faith, policy, and our reproductive lives intersect.